by John King
Wooden terracing led down to the dancefloor and Will had been bundled aside during Penetration’s set as a big crew of skins piled through the crowd. Black Slate and Fusion had been okay, but Pauline Murray stood out. Will had wished he was a bit older and that the Penetration vocalist had taken a shine to him, spotting the boy in the crowd. Pete was at the back of the terrace during the break between Black Slate and Fusion, snogging with some punk girl with peroxide hair, torn fishnets and a PVC mini-skirt with a silver zip up the back. Pete was pissed and leant over the back of the terrace to puke on those down below, then went back to the punkette who didn’t seem bothered by the new flavour. Will kept his eyes ahead most of the time, young enough to mix embarrassment with curiosity. A stream of Clash tracks blasted through the speakers. Pete had been wearing his Snow White and the Seven Dwarves shirt at the time. Poor old Snow White was getting a regular servicing from the sick midgets, stumpy erections jammed into every available orifice. Happy, Grumpy and Doc were doing their best to give the girl a night she would never forget. Disney’s caring image had been given a gangbanging punk rock reinterpretation, a tribute to consumerism which the righteous majority condemned. Will looked at Karen sitting on the couch sipping her tea and smiled as he linked Pauline Murray and a similar look.
He pulled out the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy In The UK. It was the EMI pressing and worth a bit. Will went into one, the snakebite hitting, telling Karen that nobody had ever matched the Pistols, the best working-class London band ever, despite the latter-day revisionism of middle-class journalists who insisted that punk was nothing more than an example of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s manipulative powers. Will told Karen that it was the natural progression of boot boy culture. That the new-wave term really got up his nose. It was always like that. History was written by a certain element in society and that was the only version left behind. Johnny Rotten was the top man, hearing that voice when he was a kid in school striking the right chord. The Pistols were an obvious development. Simple really. One hundred per cent boot boy music with a chunk of non-party politics thrown in which he had been able to appreciate because it came from his own experience. Paul Cook and Steve Jones were sound as well, West London boys. He liked picking up the records, looking at the sleeve designs and then pulling the vinyl out. Funny really, but he’d never been into the coloured stuff, the yellows and pinks and reds. He preferred black vinyl. Beautiful stuff.
He wanted to put the record on, preferring the B-side to Anarchy In The UK, but it was midnight and it wasn’t the right time for good old-fashioned lyric-heavy listening. He was sitting with a classy woman and needed something a bit more mellow. He switched to the albums and asked Karen what she wanted. She didn’t mind, so he took out a King Tubby collection and was back on the couch with the volume low and Karen leaning into him again. He stroked the back of her hair, looking at the perfectly formed ears, three earrings in the left, two in the right. She wore a silver necklace and the pendant had worked its way to the side, some kind of pagan latticework with a hidden meaning. He could feel her breasts against his stomach. The heater was working and the room was warm. Karen sat up and twisted her body, taking off the cardigan. Her breasts pushed forward against the top and Will could feel movement between his legs, noticing the line of a low-cut bra. He tried to think of something else, playing the gentleman. He was getting into the swing of the thing, deciding he would play hard to get. He went back to the records, back to the music, back to the Lyceum.
He’d been to quite a few gigs with Pete. The Lyceum had been a good Sunday night out. Like that time when the UK Subs had been due to support Generation X. The Subs had a hardcore following and for some reason Charlie Harper’s band hadn’t played, so the Subs element of the crowd was well wound up by the time Generation X were due on stage. Billy Idol was the cowboy of punk, with his pretty looks and plastic leer, and the Subs fans hadn’t exactly welcomed him. But it was afterwards Will remembered most. Coming out and finding a hundred or so skinheads lined up across the road, a lot of them with bottles, waiting for the UK Subs mob to appear. He was with Pete on the Strand when the skins steamed in and then the old bill had arrived and broken things up. They’d walked towards Trafalgar Square and the skins were given a police escort along the Strand behind them towards Lord Nelson waiting with his press gang and the short sharp shock of naval service. A couple of stray German tourists heard the skinhead chant and shot off into Covent Garden. Pete had been good like that, taking a kid along with him to gigs. He’d been a nice bloke. Nothing was too much trouble. He didn’t have to bother with his younger brother’s mate who happened to be into good music at an early age. Most people wouldn’t have made the effort.
Karen got up and went out of the room. A blast of cold air hit when she opened the door. Those gigs had been brilliant, the DJs either playing solid reggae between punk bands, or maybe throwing in one or two punk singles, playing them a speed too slow to take the piss. It was all the same tradition really. Ska and skinhead bands. Punk and reggae. Soul and mod. Then there was the techno and scratch, rap, jungle, drum n bass, all the colours of the rainbow. But he knew where the roots were. You couldn’t beat music. Anyone who didn’t like music wasn’t alive as far as Will was concerned. It was something to be proud of, the way cultures had blended so successfully in music. That was the way racism broke down. Living and growing up with black kids, Asians, whatever. That’s how they’d been raised. The whole skinhead thing owed its roots to the ska bands and all that old Jamaican dancehall style. Classic sounds. Boss sounds. And it was best heard on vinyl, with all the rough edges. CDs didn’t compare, and they lacked the sleeve artwork and overall feel. CDs were convenient and polished and part of the technological age, and more sophisticated reproduction methods were on the way. New formats would be marketed and software pushed, then the hardware, raking in the cash. Will had a CD player, but whenever possible bought vinyl. Like Karen had said, soul was more important than mechanics.
He stretched out on the couch. The room was so warm with the gas fire burning. King Tubby soothed him. He was relaxed but far from tired. He heard water running and Karen stuck her head round the door to tell him she was going to have a bath. She felt dirty and smelly with the sweat frozen to her skin. She wouldn’t be long, and Will was bending his head back just seeing the head detached, wondering what was behind the door. When she was gone he closed his eyes, concentrating on the music. He was okay for a while, then started thinking of Karen. He heard the water shut off.
He had finished his tea and fancied a biscuit. He went into the hall. It was icy. A lamp shone in what he imagined was the bedroom. There was a strange pattern on the whitewashed ceiling. The door was half-ajar. He heard Karen splashing in the bath, King Tubby in the living room. He poked his head round the door, peering into the woman’s private world. He felt a bit guilty. It was a plant creating the shadow. A teddy bear drew his attention, sitting on the bed’s pillows. There was a purple duvet and Islamic-patterned pillowcases, a pine chest of drawers and a small stack of clean clothes on a chair. The carpet was red and the curtains black, pulled together. Light from a streetlamp highlighted the material’s texture. An electric fire had been plugged in and was beginning to have an effect.
Will went into the kitchen, remembered his manners and returned to knock on the bathroom door. He asked if he could have a biscuit. Said he was feeling hungry. Karen’s voice was slightly muffled, and he knew the answer, but wanted her to know where he was. He went to the biscuit tin and took four custard creams, then sat at the small vinyl table. He heard the plug pulled and water rushing away. The bathroom door opened and Karen went to her bedroom. It was an odd situation and Will didn’t know what he should be doing. Usually, you went back with someone and that was that, but here he was the second time round her place sitting in the kitchen eating custard creams while she was having a bath and, for all he knew, wandering around naked. He finished the biscuits and wondered whether he should go home. He was nervous.
Something wasn’t right, yet a little while ago everything had seemed perfect. His old paranoia started to return. What could she see in him anyway? What if it was a stitch-up by some of the lads? It would’ve been easier staying at home listening to music, then going straight to sleep. But here he was sitting in a strange kitchen.
Eventually he turned the light off and went towards the living room. King Tubby had fallen silent and the light had been switched off. He heard Karen call him from the bedroom. He stopped outside the near-shut door and felt his confidence go. It was the build-up that was doing it to him, the time to think and imagine. Then he was through the door and the light was right down low, the atmosphere friendly and warm, this stunner naked in front of him. Will hardly had time to look at Karen before she was up against him showing that it was no pisstake.
An hour later and Will was looking at the effect the street light had on the curtain and far wall. He’d played the same game as a kid at night when he couldn’t get off to sleep, trying to create scenes in fabric or on wallpaper. Karen was asleep and breathing deeply. Her right arm was over his chest and her breasts against his side. He felt like something major. There was no way to describe it really, just the best shag he’d ever had, and yet it wasn’t a shag at all. He needed another way to describe it. Making love, that’s what it was. Like Karen said earlier. It was probably the first time since Bev really, but much better. He had to be honest that he’d never really satisfied Bev. He’d wanted to talk about it but had never been able to find a way into the subject. He’d just felt useless, but reckoned things couldn’t be that bad because she seemed to enjoy it sometimes. She never complained or anything. Never said a word against him.
With Karen, though, they’d just merged in together. He’d felt her spasms and heard the groans and reckoned it had been alright. He hoped so, but somehow knew that the love-making had worked right away. Maybe that’s what love was all about. Not the sex so much, more the feeling. Will didn’t know about love, didn’t want to think that far ahead. He was getting soppy. Acting soft. He had to keep himself in line and not give too much away, just go with the flow and hopefully things would turn out okay. Karen shifted a bit, murmuring in her sleep. She pulled in closer. He felt great. Really happy.
The clock on the radio said it was three and Will wasn’t getting anywhere. He wanted to sleep but couldn’t. The curtain was made from fairly thick material and the light created different levels. He saw lines of men marching across an empty desert, off to war, travelling thousands of miles just to get their bollocks blown off. He thought about the teddy bear. Karen could have had it since she was a couple of years old. His own teddy bear was long gone. It was a shame really, and he wished he could remember the moment when it was forgotten. All those years and it gets dumped in the dustbin or given to the jumble. It was sad somehow, that kids had to grow up and have those kinds of things taken away. Peter Pan had the right idea. Peter Wilson forever young.
Half an hour later and Will gently removed Karen’s arm from his chest. The movement disturbed her and she turned round, curling into a ball. He looked at her back for a while in the vague light, following the gentle ridge of her backbone from below the neck, between small shoulder blades to the base of her back. He pulled the duvet down, looking at the curve of her buttocks and the shapely legs, while she slept soundly, suspended in time, somewhere far away. He thought of Harry briefly, the dream master, that ability he had to remember so much the next morning. Will pulled the duvet back up and positioned it around her neck. He got up. The electric heater was still on so the room was nice and warm. He pulled on his shirt and jeans and went into the hall, then into the living room. It was cold. He put on the gas fire third go and rolled himself a healthy spliff. He laid back on the couch with his bare feet up, feeling the burn of the flames. He was doing well. Inhaling deeply and watching smoke spiral towards the ceiling. He looked at his surroundings with no music to distract his attention, moving from the records to a row of books, past a couple of prints on the wall towards a small, crooked pile of videos.
He went over and knelt down, looking at the titles written in pencil. Most were films from the TV or comedy series, mostly Black Adder and Dad’s Army, one marked Family in black felt pen. He inserted the last cassette in the VCR and returned to the couch, remote control in his hand. He did the business and inhaled as the picture flickered and faces began to appear. It was old cine footage converted to videotape. Will was surprised by the instant close-up of a man’s face, the camera zooming-out to show what he identified as Karen’s old man. He looked like a decent enough bloke. He wore an oversized collar and sideburns and had the same crooked smile Will had seen on the face of his daughter. Karen’s dad turned and walked across a small lawn to a woman sitting in a deck chair. Karen’s mum. Had to be. The likeness was obvious. She seemed happy, waving at the camera and laughing, then turning her head away. He rewound and pushed the freeze-frame button. The face stuck in time. He leant forward and inhaled, the blow hitting home. He suddenly felt bad, like he was trespassing in a private zone, seeing the dead woman’s face and looking for clues to the future. There were lines across her forehead, but that was nothing unusual. She was dignified-looking, her hair dyed blonde with an absence of make-up on her face. Natural beauty in a rough sort of way.
It was mental freezing a bit of personal history like that. Will couldn’t imagine being able to watch a film of his own parents once they were dead and cremated. It was too much. It made death look irrelevant when in reality it was the ultimate degradation. Was she a bundle of bones in a rotting coffin or the woman he saw on the screen with a smile splitting her face? Will reached for the remote and pushed Play. It was bad news that frozen image. The frames flashed past and there was Karen running around with the brother she had spoken about. He tried to match the six-year-old on the video with the sleeping beauty next door. She was all grown up with the reproductive urge added to the equation, cleverly disguised as recreation. It was odd to think of making love so many years into the future with that small kid busy shouting and jumping up and down, without any kind of care or worry. He felt uncomfortable. But it was making love, not sex. Was that all sex meant, adding another division to male and female when you reached puberty? Was it possible to carry that innocence on when you grew up, or did it have to be destroyed with the toys that became childish?
What would Carter think, in his unbothered way, taking some bird back and finding Teddy sitting there on the pillow waiting for his mistress to come home from a hard night’s entertainment? Probably try and mount it into the bargain. He’d think it was soft. But it wasn’t. Will didn’t see why there had to be such a big divide. Why couldn’t sex just be loving and everything, like Karen was saying at Club Verbal, a bit of romance without the materialist hard-sell? He watched the kids run and play and Mum and Dad kiss for the camera, holding hands, and he drew on the blow hoping to get to sleep. He stopped the video and rewound, pushed Eject. He replaced the cassette in its case.
For the first time he noticed a vase of flowers by the window. Every year Karen bought carnations on the anniversary of her mother’s death. They’d been her favourite. The flowers were red and white and pink, and though he didn’t like flowers much, at least not out of the ground and indoors, the ceremony made them worth something. At least the memory was preserved, a bit like his punk records, though he knew he was a bit of a tosser comparing vinyl and death. He’d bought Pete’s records off Mango five years after Pete went missing. It bothered him a bit at first, but it was Mango who’d made the offer. Will had been into the idea of owning lots of records and paid the asking price, Mango using the money to go out with a millionaire’s daughter from St John’s Wood he’d been trying to impress. If he remembered right, Mango had taken her for a meal, got her pissed and then been blown out. He’d been well fucked off about it, but wasn’t bothered about the records. It was a bit bad somehow. The whole transaction lacked dignity, even though the records were only objects.
&n
bsp; Will finished his smoke, coughed, and went for a wee. He was halfway through when the fire alarm in the hall started sounding, a high-pitched scream that cut through the dull throb in his head. He splashed his jeans but was straight in pushing the right button. He sweated a bit listening for Karen. Silence returned. It was the smoke that had set off the alarm. Talk about touchy. He went back to the bathroom and tried to wash the piss out of his jeans, then returned to Karen’s bed and crept in. It frightened him that she hadn’t heard the smoke alarm. She hadn’t even shifted her position since he left twenty minutes before. She turned in her sleep and cuddled up to him again.
Will lay on his back listening to his heart, her heart, both hearts together. The bass was deep and contented. His eyes were open and he became used to the faint light once more, thinking of the video and what a shame it was there was no film of Pete. It was probably for the best. It was better just to erase that kind of thing. He felt sorry for himself and Karen, whatever happened, even if he never saw her again. His heart beat had always worried him as a kid. It seemed so easy to die. A valve could go just like that, or a fatal disease appear and you’d be on the dissection table with your guts in a plastic bag and an attendant eating his ham sandwiches. That worry was in the past now. He was positive. He thought of his time with Bev. They’d been close at first, like this, but gradually the bed had been separated down the middle, especially in the summer when it was hot and sticky and touching another person made you feel clammy and dirty. In the winter it was different, closing up for body heat. But it was okay, because this was what life was all about, getting attached for a while and enjoying intimacy before moving on. A lot of people missed out. Couldn’t make the connection because they were scared of the pain later on. Loads of blokes he knew didn’t get the chance, whether the fault was theirs or a bit further down the road. You couldn’t get the same fulfilment wanking your life away, even if it was in the shape of one-off sex.